An American Religion

The debate over what does and doesn’t count as a religion has been ongoing for centuries, and in MOVE, author Richard Kent Evans attempts to answer this question using the fascinating story of a little-known group. It was called MOVE, and while the members of the group considered it a religion, the courts saw it as anything but.

MOVE was started in Philadelphia in the early 1970s by a man named John Africa. It was a small group, and it consisted of mainly African Americans. in 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department attacked a home shared by “MOVE people,” using tear gas, ten thousand rounds of ammunition, and improvised explosives. Most infamously, a police officer riding in a helicopter dropped a bomb containing C-4 explosives onto the roof of the MOVE house, starting a fire. Officials allowed the fire to spread in hopes of chasing the MOVE people out of the house, and police officers fired upon those who tried to escape the flames. Eleven MOVE people died in the attack, including John Africa. Five of those who died were children.

The story of MOVE has been virtually forgotten for years. In this book, Evans dives deep into how we decide what constitutes a genuine religious tradition, and the enormous consequences of that decision.

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

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What It Is, How It Works, and Why It’s Not Taking Over Our Country

For years, anti-Muslim propagandists have circulated horror stories about shariah, insisting wrongly that it is a draconian and oppressive Islamic law that all Muslims must abide by. Demystifying Shariah, by Sumbul Ali-Karamali, explains the realities of shariah in an accessible, engaging style, while also confronting the misconceptions that remain so prevalent in many American minds today.

Ali-Karamali uses personal anecdotes as well as her degree in Islamic law to explain both the past and the present of shariah—its various meanings, how it developed, and how the shariah-based legal system operated for over a thousand years. She explains how it affects the daily lives of Muslims, and how to understand the modern calls for shariah. This book is an effort to educate people on the truths of shariah, and to help people understand why they should care about it whether they are Muslim or not.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Purveyors of Islamophobia today often promote mischaracterizations of shariah in order to demonize Muslims. Ali-Karamali’s book represents a critically important antidote to this willful ignorance. It offers the uninformed reader a helpful background in the basics of shariah relative to Muhammad and the early Islamic community before exploring the many dimensions of shariah today with laudable clarity. With dual qualifications as both a lawyer and a specialist in Islamic law, Ali-Karamali is perfectly positioned to help the public disentangle itself from the thicket of misinformation and disinformation nurtured by the latest advocates of religious intolerance.”—Peter Gottschalk, professor of religion, Wesleyan University, and author of American Heretics

“Sumbul Ali-Karamali is able to speak to both Muslims and others about Islam with clarity and expertise. Shariah has been demonized in the United States for nakedly political purposes in a way that Roman Catholic canon law was in the nineteenth century, and in the way that halakhah or Jewish law has been by modern anti-Semites. Ali-Karamali expertly clears away the ideological cobwebs and lays out the facts about shariah and Muslim practice, and manages to make it all a page-turner.”—Juan Cole, professor of history, University of Michigan, and author of Muhammad

“An engaging, elegant, and accessible book on a subject everyone needs to understand. With clarity, compassion, and even humor, Sumbul Ali-Karamali explains shariah in a relatable narrative format, far from abstract, and guaranteed to resonate with those interested in separating the truth about shariah from all the myths and tall tales circulating in the public discourse.”—Reza Aslan, best-selling author of Zealot

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

Rabbi Ira Sanders and the Fight for Racial and Social Justice in Arkansas, 1926-1963

Rabbi Ira Sanders was a dedicated advocate for social justice long before the term entered everyday usage. He led Little Rock’s Temple B’nai Israel for nearly forty years, and was a trained social worker in addition to being a rabbi. Just and Righteous Causes, by James L. Moses, is a complete biographical study of Sanders, and examines how this bold social-activist rabbi expertly navigated the intersections of race, religion, and gender to advocate for a more just society.

When Sanders arrived in Little Rock from New York in 1926, he began began striving against the Jim Crow system almost immediately. His career as a dynamic religious and community leader spanned the traumas of the Great Depression, World War II and the Holocaust, and the social and racial struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. This book balances scholarly and narrative tones to provide a personal look into the complicated position of the southern rabbi and the Jewish community throughout the political struggles of the twentieth-century South.

In 1957, he appeared in front of the state legislature to urge compliance with Brown v. Board of Education and encourage the desegregation of school districts. This is an excerpt from that speech:

“The state of Arkansas is very dear to me. It has provided me the opportunity to serve many causes in social welfare, touching both colored and white citizens, Jew and Christian alike. And in recognition of these efforts, the University of Arkansas in 1951 conferred upon me its highest honorary degree—Doctor of Humane Letters. I say this with the deepest humility, so that you may know why I doubly love this State and want to keep unsullied its good name. I would be unworthy of the sacred trust did I not raise my voice in protest of all four measures… I believe that the words of Leviticus 25 are the bedrocks upon which American democracy alone can survive. That are these words inscribed on our Liberty Bell: “Ye shall proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Our nation must be based on liberty and justice for all peoples, whose contributions to the cultural pluralism of our land have been great and varied. The dignity of the individual must never be destroyed by granting the state those powers which would deny anyone the liberty and the freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. These four bills on which we are speaking tonight were all concerned with the thought of circumventing the highest legal authority of the land. They will never stand the test of time, for higher than the legal law of the land stands this moral law of God. It operates slowly but surely, and in the end justice will prevail.”

To read the full speech, click here. For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

Textures of Devotion in Everyday Life

Throughout the past few decades, the study of religion has shifted away from essentialist arguments that claim to explain what religion is and why it exists. It is commonly viewed as something that people practice, whether in the presence of others or alone. But what is meant by “practice”? What Happens When We Practice Religion?, by Robert Wuthrow, delves into the central concepts, arguments, and tools that can be used to explore and understand religion today.

Recently, scholars have begun to move away from trying to understand the philosophy of religion. Using methods from anthropology, psychology, religious studies, and sociology, they now focus on what people do and say: their daily religious habits, routines, improvisations, and adaptations. In this book, Wuthnow shows how four intersecting areas of inquiry—situations, intentions, feelings, and bodies—shed important light on religious practice in the modern world.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“With his characteristic insight and erudition, Robert Wuthnow has produced another gem of a book. What Happens When We Practice Religion? is a broad-ranging and generous text, distilling several generations’ worth of social scientific work on the paradigms of practice that will engage newcomers and old-timers alike.”—Matthew Engelke, Columbia University

“This highly interdisciplinary book offers an integrated theoretical framework and a set of research tools for probing religious practice more deeply. Robert Wuthnow weaves together a vast amount of literature that clearly and effectively advances his arguments.”—Ann Taves, University of California, Santa Barbara

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.